


I’m going to hug you now, please don’t pull your gun on me.

by RABunzai



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aunt Natasha Romanov, Aunt-Niece Relationship, Coming of Age, Family, Gen, Hugs, Natasha Needs a Hug, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 13:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10697856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RABunzai/pseuds/RABunzai
Summary: Natasha and Lila and hugs. (What it means to love the person not the hero)





	I’m going to hug you now, please don’t pull your gun on me.

  
**Lila, aged 7**  
  
Seated on the driver’s side of a dubiously borrowed SHIELD vehicle, Natasha uses the rear view mirror to pull her fringe over the fresh cut on her forehead and applies a bit more cover up to the bruise on her chin.  When she’s satisfied she doesn’t look like she just walked out of a war zone (or limped from one which is closer to the truth), she gathers up her strength and exits the car.  
  
The Meyer-Harris Elementary School Open Night is in full swing. The tiny gym has been partitioned off with a dozen mobile pin up boards, creating a maze of decorated walls between which families move clumsily from space to space. Natasha finds herself feeling like oil in water among the throng. It’s just the possible concussion, she tells herself, and navigates to the edge of the room where she pretends to be invested in the work of Grade 1/Class B.  
  
 Arranged with as much care as a Louvre exhibition are a variety of drawings, clay creations, papier-mâché and macaroni necklaces. So many macaroni necklaces.  
  
She gives them enough contemplation so as not to look too disinterested before she moves on, following the flow of the crowd, casually surveying the art on offer whilst surreptitiously searching for the family she’s come to meet.  
  
On the next wall she finds some familiar faces in an ode to the Heroes of New York.  
As expected there are many crayon renderings of the team and one particularly impressive Ironman doodle that has the goatee on the outside of the mask. She makes a note to find a sharpie the next time she’s at the tower. She strikes gold again when she finds a particularly breath taking Captain America drawing complete with triangle torso and slanted speech bubble with the words ‘To America and Beyond’. _Oh yes,_ she takes a snap with her phone and sends it to Steve with the caption, _New artwork for the tower. What do you think? xxx_  
  
“Is that your child’s work?” A woman beside her asks, baby balanced on her hip. She gestures, a full body movement with baby involved, to a lumpy Hulk figure. “My boy is obsessed with that green thing. Everything has to be green now.”  
“Oh,” Natasha says, suddenly feeling out of place again, “Well, I’m sure it helps at dinner with his vegetables…”  
The woman laughs and is about to say something more when a high-pitched yell cuts her off.  
“Aunty Nat!” Lila cries, barreling through the crowd with Clint following laconically. Natasha, always one to recognize an exit strategy, takes that as her cue to leave and moves towards the tiny force of nature.  
“Hello Lila,” Natasha greets as the little girl rushes to hug her, small hands finding fresh bruises.  
“You made it?” Clint says, eyebrows raised because he knows Natasha had been in Caracas eight hours ago. She shrugs.  
“I promised.”  
  
“Come look at my drawing Aunty Nat!” Lila says excitedly and pulls on Natasha’s hand to take her across the room towards a bright blue partition. Pinned to the wall is a banner; Grade 2/ Class A, the block letters colored in with garish purple glitter. Underneath it in green texta are the words ‘My Hero Is....’  
Huh, Natasha thinks, so it looks like that was a school wide theme.  
  
Lila points to a picture on the bottom row and Natasha kneels down, determinedly not wincing when she feels a stitch pop. She forgets about the pain fairly quickly though when her eyes land on the artwork she’s come to see.  
  
The stick figure has a head covered in bright red squiggles. The arms are colored tan and the legs a dark blue in a similar approximation to the clothes Natasha wore last time she was at the farm. And then there’s the writing.  
  
**_My hero is my Aunty Nat._**  
**_She knows ballet and crab migar._**  
**_She draws with me and reads me books._**  
**_She teaches me lots of new words._**  
**_She is going to buy me a cat._**  
**_Aunty Nat is my hero._**  
  
Natasha can’t breathe and she knows it’s not from the recent blood loss. Her hand reaches for the picture before she can stop it, tracing the last line gently. There’s something hot in her eyes that she blinks away. “It’s beautiful,” she whispers, voice caught on something.  
Lila, obviously happy that her work has been so well received, captures her in another over enthusiastic hug. Natasha raises her hands, holds her tiny shoulders and hugs her back.  
  
Clint’s smiling and he gives her a moment before catching her eye over Lila’s shoulder and mouthing the word _“Cat?”_  
  
  
  
**Lila, aged 16**  
  
“No way!” The teenager exclaims, jumping on her toes with excitement as Natasha pulls the black corvette up to the curb. No sooner is she out of the car is Lila on her, throwing her arms around the spy and squeezing. “Thank you Aunty Nat, thank you, thank you!”  
Natasha pauses for just a moment at the unexpected contact but quickly recovers and gently returns the hug. 16-year old Lila is all long limbs and uncontrolled eagerness.  
“It’s just a driving lesson,” Natasha says cautiously. “You don’t get the car until the insurance premium gets below five figures.” _Or never, probably never._  
Lila pulls away and rolls her eyes in typical teenage fashion.  
“I know, I know. But it’s a lesson! Dad won’t take me out after the thing with the cow and the mailbox even though it wasn’t my fault and the postman said he was fine…”  
Oh yes, the incident. Last time Natasha had checked Clint was still trying to reattach the truck’s bumper.  
“Well, I can guarantee my ride handles better than the truck….and this is Stark’s test track so no mailboxes for miles,” Natasha says and gamely holds the keys out.  Lila takes them with a look of glee and the excited teen is already in the front seat by the time Natasha walks around to the passenger door.  
“Safety first,” Natasha warns and waits for the younger woman to buckle up. Once all the mirrors are adjusted and all the signals checked, Natasha turns to Lila and grins.  
“Now, the most important thing to know when driving a car like this is, it’s not made to go slow.”  
  
  
  
**Lila, aged 17**  
  
The sun is setting when Natasha steps outside the farmhouse door, casting red-orange light across the fields and draping long shadows over the ground.    
  
Lila’s sits on the bottom step looking into the distance. She doesn’t turn around at the sound of the door creaking but her shoulders tense and it tells the spy that the young woman is aware of her presence, just choosing not to acknowledge it.  
  
With no immediate invite Natasha moves to sit beside her, close, within touching distance but far enough away to give her space. Sometimes she needs distance like her father. This is one of those times.  
  
The crickets have started and the sun is almost all the way down when Lila finally speaks.  
“I read it,” she says and there are shadows in her eyes now too. “Everything you put on the internet. I read your file. What you did before…”  
Natasha knew this would come some day but knowing hasn’t prepared her for the hurt, the deep shame she feels wash over her anew.  
  
Lila stands suddenly, her body taught and controlled and so unlike herself. Natasha gives her the height and remains seated.  
“You murdered good people. Families. Children. The hospital fire…”  
“I lit it,” Natasha confirms. She remembers the smell of smoke, the way her hands had not trembled at all.  
Lila looks down and away, looks at the tractor marks in the sand and the half peeled gutters. She looks anywhere but Natasha’s eyes. “Were you brainwashed? Like the Winter Soldier? It said they did things to you…” Oh, the hope in her voice hurts. _Tell me you’re not a monster._  
Natasha shakes her head. “No, not that way.” She was remade over and over but before she was a Widow she was a young girl who had loved her mother, and Mother Russia was the only mother she had ever known. … _the glory of Soviet supremacy and the warmth of my parents_ ….. She had wanted to make her mother proud. Now she sees the look in Lila’s eyes, the same pain she herself had worn when she realized her mother was not perfect, was in fact a monster.  
“Were you ever going to tell me?” Lila’s voice breaks, her tears are just shadows on her cheeks now. Natasha wants to reach for her, wants so desperately to be a place of warmth and safety and trust. Wants to feel like she was more than what they made her. One traitorous hand reaches out but Lila steps away.  
“No,” Natasha whispers.  
Lila says nothing but her boots are heavy on the stairs as she walks back inside the house. The door slams shut with a crack and Natasha feels the sound in her chest. Sometimes she forgets she has a heart that can break.  
  
  
  
**Lila, aged 17. Still.**  
  
“Lila?”  
“Aunt Nat!” Lila whimpers and rises from the park bench only to seemingly catch herself and sit back down again, arms wrapped tightly around her chest. “I’m sorry I just, I didn’t know who to call and I…needed….” She drifts off, her mind clearly tired and her voice croaky from the tears she’s shed.  
  
Natasha comes to sit beside her on the bench and silently takes her in; the smell of alcohol, the way she trembles, shirt rumpled and hair a mess. It’s cold out and Lila’s not wearing a jumper so Natasha pulls off her jacket and hands it to her. Lila takes it and wraps it around her shoulders.  
  
“What happened?” Natasha asks softly. There’s a fear growing in her stomach as she awaits the answer. Something cold and heavy that she hasn’t been able to push away since the younger woman’s midnight phone call. She’d spent the whole drive here with a grip so tight it could have broken the steering wheel.  
  
Lila sighs and tightens the jacket around her shoulders. “It’s stupid but I…I went to a house party with John. We’d both been drinking and…we had a fight. We broke up and I…had to get out of there so I just ran…”  
  
At those words Natasha remembers how to breathe again, a sense of relief settling over her. She had feared the entire drive over. Feared the worst and there are so many worsts in her mind. Evil that echoes in the horrors of her past. But it’s just a break up. Lila’s first break up.  
  
She is the Black Widow. She could track the boy down and scare him to within an inch of his life, or worse, she could have Captain America track him down and lecture him but…Lila hadn’t called because she needed the Black Widow. She’d called Natasha. She needed _Natasha_.  
  
Natasha wants to hold her but their last conversation at the farm still haunts her, makes her feel unworthy of that kind of touch and so she settles for reaching out and placing her hand on the bench between them. To simply be a presence there for her, should she need it.  
  
Lila looks down startled and then up to meet Natasha’s eyes. She stares for three full seconds before she lunges across the space and tucks her head under Natasha’s chin, wrapping her arms tight around Natasha’s ribs. Lila presses herself in firm and unyielding, into a space that was long ago carved out for her. Natasha grips her right back and holds her, strong and warm and safe.

 

**Author's Note:**

> As a kid, sometimes there’s a moment when you realize the adults in your life are not perfect, they can hurt and make mistakes. And then sometimes there’s the moment you choose to love them anyway.


End file.
